Footnote to the preceding

According to the Miami Herald for July 12,

[s]ix people attacked a young mother on a suburban Paris train, chopping off her hair and scribbling swastikas on her abdomen in what leaders denounced Sunday as an example of growing anti-Semitism. ...

President Jacques Chirac expressed a sense of "dread" over the attack, Jewish and Muslim leaders condemned it, and politicians of all stripes voiced shock as news of the attack emerged. ...

The Interior Ministry said the woman was not Jewish, and police said she no longer lives in Paris' 16th district. That the attackers mistook their victim's identity did nothing to soften the horror in France, where assaults on Jews and Muslims have escalated over the past several years.

The Interior Ministry said Friday it had recorded 135 anti-Jewish acts in the first six months of this year, as well as 375 threats. The figure was nearly as high as the numbers from all of last year, when a total of 593 anti-Jewish acts or threats were registered.

However, on July 13 Haaretz reported that

[t]hree days after an alleged attack on a woman riding a suburban Paris train, by six men who mistakenly thought she was Jewish, new details in the case cast doubts on the woman's credibility.

The cable television station LCI broadcast an unattributed report stating that the woman, whose name has been withheld, had previously filed six complaints of assault.

A senior police official told French daily Le Monde on Monday that "since Sunday, the woman has given contradictory details in her testimony."

Meanwhile, the woman said she couldn't identify the attackers since their faces were covered, no eyewitnesses have been found (which could, however, be because failing to help a person in danger is a crime in France and they may be afraid of prosecution), and a check of the tapes of surveillance cameras along the route has so far turned up empty.

So it seems there is some reason to doubt her story. Here's a question for you: Does it matter?

Seriously. Does it? In the sense of filing a false police report, sure. But in terms of the wider reaction?

The French public has been riveted by the affair. The major newspapers devoted front-page headlines, broad coverage and editorials to the incident, as well as to the reactions of religious community leaders and politicians of every stripe. The daily Liberation reported that the fight against "the anti-Semitism epidemic" is expected to be stepped up and quoted public figures who called on the government to employ "unprecedented" measures.

Meanwhile, condemnations of the attack by politicians and public figures continued to flood the French media outlets.

Draw a comparison with the case that some people, especially those in New England, may remember, that of Charles Stuart.

In October, 1989, Charles Stuart called 911, frantically saying both he and his wife had been shot by a black robber. His wife died, he survived. A massive search for a black man with a "raspy voice" was undertaken through the mixed-race Mission Hill district where the shooting took place. It eventually turned up a suspect, one William Bennet.

One problem: Bennet wasn't the shooter. Stuart was. He murdered his wife and shot himself to cover it up. If his accomplice, his younger brother, hadn't gotten an attack of conscience, he might well have gotten away with it. Instead, with a warrant for his arrest issued, he committed suicide.

How did he think he could get away with this? How did he almost pull it off? Racism, pure and simple. People were ready and willing to believe his story, ready and willing to just accept that some vaguely-described black man had murdered a pregnant woman and tried to murder her husband. And Stuart knew people would believe it, believe it eagerly.

Now go back to France. The reaction points in a somewhat different direction but still reaches a related conclusion. People were prepared to believe that she was attacked by vaguely described "North African" and black men because she was thought to be a Jew; they were instinctively outraged. Just as Stuart knew his audience would react with racism, the woman here (if her story is false) knew her audience would react with revulsion.

This is both good and bad. (In clear preference to Stuart, which was just bad.) The good part is that it means government and community leaders in France are aware of, are concerned about, admit to, the existence of violent anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim bigotry in France. The bad part is that it shows the breadth and extent of that violent bigotry there is to be aware of, concerned about, admit to, so much so that any claim of it seems obviously true.

We have so far to go, at times it seems so discouraging....